Preservation in situ or excavation? Session in EAA 2014 (Istanbul, September 2014)

Preservation in situ or excavation? Session in EAA 2014 (Istanbul, September 2014)

The EAA 2014 is going to be in the beautiful city of Istanbul, September 10th-14th. https://www.eaa2014istanbul.org/site

Dick de Jaeger, Eva Kars, Carolina Andersson and Vibeke Vandrup Martens have had a session accepted and would welcome paper and poster abstracts. Submission of papers for our session is open till January 27th, please submit your abstracts via the submission form https://www.eaa2014istanbul.org/submission_form (theme 2: managing archaeological heritage, session title: T02S022, preservation in situ or excavation).

T02S022 Preservation in situ or excavation?

Names: Dick de Jager; Eva Kars; Carolina Andersson; Vibeke Vandrup Martens

Is preservation in situ, more than twenty years after Malta, still the preferred solution? Practice has shown that that some preserved sites, like Medieval deposits in Swedish towns, have rapidly lost their information due to weathering and erosion. What happens if monitoring shows such accelerated degradation? Will roads and buildings be removed to facilitate a rescue excavation? Or will this mean that the heritage is essentially lost, and that monitoring is a cheap way for the developer to avoid archaeological excavations – and a societal illusion of preserving more than is actually the case? Even if safeguarded, sites are often essentially abandoned and no scientific (protective) measures are taken, resulting in a potential loss of the valuable archaeological heritage. Preservation in situ is not the end, but just a beginning. On-site heritage management should include physical protection measures, monitoring of the quality of the site and a design of the surface area that reflects the archaeological value. That would be an attractive way to communicate the hidden heritage which will be usable for the scientific community as well as for the general public. We invite papers that present theoretical views on preservation in situ and the problems connected to it.